Then there is the "Journée," or a day is chosen with the approval of the government, committees are formed in all the cities, towns, and villages of France. Bands of young girls and children start out early to sell flags or boutonnierés or rosettes, on the steps of the churches, at the railroad station, in the public squares and streets, holding their little pincushions stuck with flags, or scraps of ribbon, with a sealed tin box for coins. Thus, enormous sums are collected for the various war works, and every one, no matter how poor or humble, can give his offering.
Besides these charities, innumerable "Ouvroirs" exist in every city. Sewing-rooms, where poor women are paid (and fed) to make shirts, chemises, belly-bands, socks, pyjamas, etc., and everyone is thus helped through the long, hard winter.
Women are taking men's places all over France. Women are in the munition factories, in the government postoffice and telegraph service, as tramway conductors, as metro ticket collectors—places they never dreamed of filling before the war, for the Frenchwoman is essentially a home-body, her "intérieur" (home) being dearer to her than all else; to take these masculine occupations is especially hard.
The great dressmakers of the Rue de la Paix, the Rue de Rivoli, and the Place Vendôme are doing their share, too. One floor is usually devoted to some charitable purpose, either an "Ouvroir," or a convalescent home, etc.; and that the little "midinette" (apprentice) may feel that she, too, is working for France, a work has been started called "la marraine" (the godmother). Through proper channels, any woman or girl can be put in communication with some lonely soldier in the trenches. She writes him long, encouraging letters. She keeps up his spirits by letting him know someone is thinking of him. When, by strictest economy, she can scrape a few sous together, she buys him a ten-cent packet of tobacco, or a few postal cards, or a pencil, and back in due time comes a soiled card, written in pencil, telling her the news of the trenches, how they will soon throw the "sales boches" out of France, and promising to spend many a happy hour with his "marraine" if he is lucky enough to escape the German bullets.
PRISONERS AND AMBULANCES
So many friends have asked me to tell them about our life here in Brittany, that I have selected a few facts, hoping that these little wavelets, on the ocean of war-literature at present inundating the country, may prove of interest.
Let me first tell the story of an American girl of whom we are all very proud—a girl whose courage and devotion has won her the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille d'or des Epidemes.
The Vicontesse de la Mettrie, daughter of the late Comte Amedee de Gasquet—James of New Orleans and Dinard—and grand-daughter of the late Colonel George Watson Pratt, of Albany, has lived in Dinard all her life. On the 18th of August, 1914, she offered her services as a nurse, and since that date has been constantly on duty, never sparing herself in her devotion to her wounded.